Fonts

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A typeface is a set of glyphs, or images that represent the characters in a script. A font is a physical embodiment of a typeface, such as a bitmap font or a scalable outline font.

Brand fonts

These typefaces have been used in branding for Nintendo products or NES licensees' products. Be careful when using these on a product so as to avoid confusion with the original product's trade dress.

Nintendo logo
The most consistently designed imitation of that lettering is Nu Hanafudaya. Others include Pretendo and Nintender.
Game & Watch and Family Computer
ITC Avant Garde, using oblique variant for 'A'
Nintendo Entertainment System (and ColecoVision)
Corporate (digitized as Corporatus by Alex Rosario)
Game Boy
Lighter weights of Gill Sans Italic. Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance use a custom bolder word mark, as the 'M' in the darker weights of Gill Sans is drawn differently
Super NES
Univers (digitized as U001 by URW)
Nintendo 64
Zurich Std Extra Black
Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance
Frapple + lettering inspired by Bank Gothic
Wii and Wii U
Custom lettering
Nintendo Switch
Room Black
Capcom logo and Jeopardy! clues
Korinna

8x8-pixel fonts

Most NES games draw text with fonts that occupy some fraction of an 8x8-pixel character cell, such as 6x7 or 7x7 pixels to leave space between glyphs. Many use a font that originated in Quiz Show, a 1976 arcade game published under Atari's Kee Games brand.

A few games with lowercase have ligatures, or glyphs that represent more than one character. The numerous uses of 'il' in Thwaite are an example, and several ligatures are present in EarthBound Beginnings.

8x16-pixel fonts

Proportional fonts

A proportional font or variable-width font has glyphs whose advance width differs. This is used, for example, to make 'm' wider than 'i'.

NES projects using a proportional font:

  • Tile fonts, with glyph widths as one or more of 8, 16, and 24
    • The Immortal
    • FizzBuzz
  • Pino's library that renders to CHR RAM
    • Action 53, RHDE, robotfindskitten, 240p Test Suite, Nova the Squirrel

External links